The Burrinjuck Dam "Beer Barrel" Encounter

Burrinjuck Dam sits about 60 km south-west of Yass, in New South Wales. The 1967 police papers spell it Burrenjuck. The couple at the centre of this case lived there. Their names have never appeared in the public accounts. Bill Chalker, who told the story from the RAAF's own file, calls them simply "a local couple".

It was about 12:40 am on Saturday 17 June 1967. The husband was driving. About half a mile ahead, something hung "about 200 feet up in the air over an open grassed paddock and within about 200 feet of the roadway."

"The object I saw was a red glowing object, the colour was an orange red, the whole thing seemed to be a red glow," he told police. Its shape was "similar to an old style beer barrel which was lying on its side." It was "a fair size." Then came the light. "I saw a blast of greyish white light in a V shape come from this object towards the ground."

The object began to move. Slowly. It drifted toward Burrenjuck, parallel with the road. "As the object travelled away from me, it appeared to have a bouncy action from one side to the other." It neither climbed nor dropped. "The object was still only travelling at a slow speed. It did not appear to gain or loose any height."

He followed at about 45 mph. He was gaining. "I followed it for a measured 1 and 9/10 miles to a place where there is a rise in the road." By then he was "only about 200 yards distance off the object." Red lights flicked all around it, much quicker than lights used on aircraft. Twice he got out of the car. The first time he saw the barrel shape. Near the end he heard it. "I could distinctly hear a clicking noise coming from the object."

Then the object made a left hand turn. It headed off toward some hills between the towns of Bowning and Yass. He had watched it for approximately 15 minutes. His verdict was plain. "It was some foreign object. It was not any form of aircraft that I know about."

Sergeant A.B. Vale of Yass Police took statements and searched the paddock. "Nothing was seen to indicate that the object had been on the ground or had caused any scorching," he reported. He found no sign the couple had been drinking. They were "matured persons, and highly respected citizens of Burrenjuck." His conclusion: "it would appear that they did both see something unusual in the sky early that morning."

The reports went to RAAF Headquarters Operational Command. The summary sheet listed the possible cause as "Incomplete data". An officer noted that "it is unlikely that the sighting was either a star or a plane" and that the beer barrel description "may give us a clue". He added: "Perhaps we should put it down as 'unexplained'". One account of the file also records a handwritten query, "Plasma?", pointing toward something like ball lightning. Nobody followed it up.

Beyond the police work, Chalker found "no real attempt to investigate it." He wrote: "The RAAF treatment gives us more of a clue to the lack of seriousness and rigour in their follow up." The case appears in his book The Oz Files and in Keith Basterfield's catalogue of Australian reports, which cites the National Archives file. No photograph, film or radar record exists. A week later, James E. McDonald began his Australian tour, though nothing shows he met the couple. In Chalker's account the case sits just before another police-documented roadside encounter, at Nebo. The beer barrel over the paddock was never identified.